


Hats for Everyone

by penintime



Category: Practical Magic (1998)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Gen, Home, Homecoming, Motherhood, Seasonal, Sisters, Spring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:29:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21845962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penintime/pseuds/penintime
Summary: Sally is reminded that the Aunts always know what they are doing.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Hats for Everyone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alyse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyse/gifts).



> Warm, wild, rainy wind, blowing fitfully,
> 
> Stirring dreamy breakers on the slumberous May sea,
> 
> What shall fail to answer thee? What thing shall withstand
> 
> The spell of thine enchantment, flowing over sea and land?
> 
> \- May Morning by Celia Laighton Thaxter

Each year as the weather finally turns and bumblebees stumble sleep-drunk from their burrows and take to the air clumsily, Jet throws open all the doors and windows of the house to the salty breeze and airs out winter, letting in spring. After many long months of the deafening grey silence of winter, the colourful noises of spring- chirping birds and playful winds rustling new leaves- refreshes the spirit, making it young again.

Today, though she can almost hear flower buds popping open all around her and the air is fragrant with petrichor, Sally is feeling anything but renewed. She is having a particularly dreadful morning. It is Saturday and she’s got a whole weekends worth of events planned onto a single day. She had intended to pop into her shop for an hour or so around opening, just to tidy away some paperwork. Instead, she got roped into dealing with a customer who summoned her with the magical phrase “I’d like to see the manager”, and she could no more refuse to leave the quiet little office in the back of the shop than a genie could refuse to emerge from its lamp. It was a really beastly little lady too, who clearly had managed to make her petty complaint a reason d’etre for the day. Well, she handled it, was more generous than was called for, the customer walked out satisfied, but now she is feeling a little out of sorts. And, she’s running late for every consecutive thing.

In order to not give that poor little old lady too much power, Sally must admit that it all started to go wrong for her the night before, when she got into an argument with Antonia who wants to staying out much later than normal, going with some friends to a cafe where an aspiring singer-songwriter class mate will be playing. Normally, Sally would just say no and though there might be some grumbling, that would be that, matter settled. But last night, Antonia was intent on going and she rejected, no, tore apart, all of Sally’s well crafted motherly reasoning. In the end, Antonia stormed out, slammed the door behind her and her parting words were laced with that peculiar brand of poison that only a daughter can brew, and that so wounds a mother’s heart. ‘You _hypocrite!_ You get do do whatever you want! What would you know anyway, you’re so _old_ and responsible, and, and _boring_!’ Sally does not let herself think that it hurts so because there is some modicum of truth in it.

On her way from the shop to the post office, she forgets to look where she’s going and her foot disappears into a pot hole filled with spring rain, deep enough to flood her ankle boot. She lets out a string of curses that make a flock of blackbirds raiding a nearby bin scatter in terror. At least this makes her feel a little bit better. If Antonia had only heard _that_..! 

They've had another long winter, but finally the sun has warmth again and the garden and hedgerows are showered in lacy bloom. Spring is always fleeting but it fleets a little bit quicker each year, or so Sally feels. Before she even knows it, midsummer will be upon them and it will be time for Jet’s pilgrimage to Appledore Island and the garden of her horticultural idol, Celia Laighton Thaxter. Already the day has come for the annual spring walkabout where they trek all along the lane that skirts the bay, to assess winter damage to the road and to bless the hedgerows so that they be happy and ready for their exhausting season of productivity. Gillian arrived from California last night for the occasion and the Aunts have brought their summer hats down from the attic. They will ramble and then rest somewhere along the lane to feast on a packed lunch that would make even The Famous Five envious.

Yes, Sally is running late, but still - she’s feeling rather heroic, hauling a stack of parcels and boxes through the conservatory doors and into the kitchen and with an overly dramatic sigh, dropping them on the table. The Aunts must have been potioning, because the scent of burning hair permeates the air, barely winning a brave battle against sage, cinnamon, beeswax candles, and the powdery lilac perfume the aunts favor in spring. Today she is almost regretting her standing offer to help the aunts with their errands in town: since Jet discovered online shopping there has been a never ending stream of things needing to be picked up from the post office. The delivery men do not dare test their luck on the winding road along the bay that leads to the Owen’s house at the very end of the lane.

Sally meanwhile faithfully makes the drive from town each week regardless of the weather, her old truck as reliable as a fire engine, not so much driving as juggernauting over pot holes and crevices, snow drifts and the occasional tree root. If it hasn’t snowed since, often the only tracks on the road are her own from the week before. As way of thanks for being the postal pack mule, Jet has signed Sally up for a monthly woolen stocking subscription service. Now no matter how cold it gets, the magical properties of wool mean that even when moist, her feet are kept at a rather comfortable temperature. Today though, she can’t help but feel somewhat cheated by this; she can’t even really complain about her one wet foot, and she feels like Jet’s generosity and forethought has done little except edge her out of that universal community of justified complainers that so gladly welcomes every unfortunate person who has ever stepped in a puddle. 

Every time she comes here she's bearing treats and supplies, and is welcomed enthusiastically as if she's a veritable life saver; but she doesn’t delude herself into thinking that she makes the trip solely for the Aunts’ sake. They would probably survive a nuclear winter on their lonely windswept hill, eating from their pantry and root cellar. Firewood is stacked up by the shedful, there are storm lanterns to spare, the cellar air is sweet with the fragrance of those amber beeswax candles wrapped in brown paper, and home made lavender and marigold soap. The potion’s room alone holds enough homemade booze for the aunts wait out another prohibition era. No, at least in part, the real reason she makes the drive is out of sheer self interest. Sure she adores the life she has created for herself and her daughters in town, but she can’t help but feel that constant pull drawing her back to the house and the magic of it, the wisdom of the women who live there. Or, that supposedly live here. 

’Thanks a lot for the help you guys’, Sally calls out, wiping hair from her sweaty brow. She expects to hear a ‘You’re most welcome dear’ from somewhere across the hall. Frances, though she herself wields sarcasm as precisely as a surgical tool, does not usually let anyone else get away with it in her house. But there is no reply. Sally arranges the stack of parcels more neatly, picking one up and sniffing it suspiciously, turning another one over to inspect the wax seal, recognizing the logo of a botanical supplies merchant she herself buys from. She sighs and turns around, spotting the ruins of a half-eaten breakfast on the table in the breakfast nook, mugs of cold tea with milk rings like oil slicks floating on the surface and jammy spoons dropped on the tablecloth. The aunts don’t have a dishwasher, and they aren’t overly concerned with tidiness, but it isn’t like them to waste good tea or being so blasé about heirloom linen. Where is everyone? Just as she’s about to call out again, the house reverberates with the sound of a baby wailing furiously. 

Though she has walked in on the aunts performing all manner of strange and unusual acts in the past, the scene that awaits her in the living room is genuinely shocking. It’s not the fact that every surface of the living room is covered in jars of pickled onions and eggs, or that for some reason there is a stuffed badger wearing spectacles and a bow tie on the coffee table. No, what is highly unusual is the fact that Frances, dressed to the nines in her best walking suit, matching hat and gloves and umbrella, is matter-of-factly rocking a pram in which a shrieking baby, lobster red in the face, is flailing wildly. ‘What is happening?’ Sally shouts. ‘Who is that baby?’ The screaming really is extraordinary both in volume and pitch and Sally is mentally thrust back to when Antonia was an infant, a very very loud infant that had to be rolled in the pram over a threshold for hours lest she inflict her remarkable brand of vocal terrorism on her exhausted and distressed parents. 

With an internal shiver at that memory, she shouts at her aunt; ‘What is wrong with the baby? And why aren’t you doing something?’ Her maternal instincts thus aggravated, she strides over to the pram and hoists the child up against her chest and does that little bum-jiggling dance that babies so love. Not this baby, apparently. Crouched in one of the vast leather armchairs, Gillian is hugging her knees, eyes screwed shut to the noise. 

‘We are doing something, dear.’ Frances says calmly, as if Sally is being a little slow. ‘Jet has gone to fetch a hat.’ Sally, not feeling reassured is about to inquire further when Jet descends the stairs. ‘Here, will this do?’ She asks Frances, thrusting out a small bonnet adorned with little embroidered cherries that Sally recognizes as belonging to one of her old dolls. ‘That should do marvellously,’ Frances replies and holds her arms out to Sally. ‘Pass him to me, dear.’ Sally is reluctant to give this innocent little child up to her aunts, for one they have no experience with infants and second, well they seem to have lost their minds entirely. ‘He probably needs feeding’, she says, looking around for a bottle, or a mother, seeing neither. ‘Or maybe he needs changing’. Frances isn’t a very patient person at the best of times and the shrieking means Sally’s ineptitude is wearing rather thin, but she stops herself from snapping just in time and says rather shortly, ‘What he needs is a hat. Jet, pass the hat; Sally, pass the child.’ 

Sally looks over at Gillian, eying 'back me up sis'. Gillian, incredibly, shrugs back 'What’s the harm in trying?' Reluctantly Sally goes along with this mad charade. The very instant the bonnet is placed on the child’s head, the screaming stops. ‘Aaah, yes, there we are.‘Frances places the baby in the pram and Jet opens the front door and out they go. ‘Well, are you two coming?’ Jet calls over her shoulder. Gillian rises and places a broad-brimmed hat on her head, wiping her sleek bangs to each side of her face. ‘Whose baby was that? What just happened? Where is my hat?’ Sally has many questions but for now they’ll have to wait, the aunts are over by the garden gate, waiving impatiently for them to follow. 

Later, when they have spread a quilt onto one of the benches overlooking the bay, and are partaking of egg salad and pickle sandwiches and buttery scones and thumb print cookies perfumed with lavender, Sally asks Frances the thing she’s been wanting to know. ‘How did you know he needed a hat?’ She nods towards the baby in Gillian's arms (who turned out to be the prodigy of a frazzled member of the Aunts coven, a woman in dire need of a shower and an hour or so with Netflix and chocolate, that the Aunts took mercy upon.) He’s currently happily wetting himself on Gillian’s lap, undergoing a thorough tickling protocol. ‘I didn’t know you were some kind of baby whisperer.’ She partly closes her eyes to the may sun but glances at her aunt, hoping she’s not offended. But Frances just laughs. ‘Oh Sally, your problem is that you’re too much of a good mother sometimes. Children don’t like being treated like children, dear. They just want what everyone else wants. We were all wearing hats, so of course he wanted one too. Wouldn’t you?’ Sally, who is finally wearing one, festooned with ribbons and fake flowers, is a little embarrassed. She excuses herself. She needs to go and call Antonia.


End file.
